A Red-letter Idea: Saving Tax Money

OUR COUNTY

November 23, 1993|By Don Boyett, Seminole County Editor

Could this be the start of something? Government bureaucrats like to build kingdoms and are reluctant to give up authority and territory, never mind how their stubbornness might burden the taxpayer. That's the conventional wisdom; and many times it's true.

But there is a flip side to that image, one not often noted. Government bureaucrats are much like those in the private sector; given a chance, some of them work to save money. This is a story about one such successful endeavor.

Like most businesses, the U.S. Postal Service gives discounts to volume users. Trouble is, you have to drop at least 500 pieces of mail in the slot daily to qualify for the 4.9-cent discount on a first-class stamp.

Though county governments send out a lot of mail, only one office in Seminole's - the clerk of the court - had enough volume to qualify for the discount. A central mail room was the only way for other county agencies to realize this savings.

But county government is like a kingdom and its duchies. Constitutional officers tend to be reluctant to give up ''authority.'' The problem would be getting all the dukes and duchesses to consolidate mail services.

As it turned out, that wasn't the problem that had been imagined, says Cindy Wright, head of the county's central services division. And the key to success, she acknowledges, was Annette MacKall, the county's mail room clerk.

MacKall, says Wright, went into the project with an attitude that it could work. She took on an added workload and took every step to make sure no office lost anything through the merger. In other words, she was customer-oriented.

Previously, MacKall and another person working part time had handled the main county mail room and courier service to outlying offices, says Wright. They still do. Other offices using the county service have reassigned workers who had spent part of the time handling mail.

In the realm of money savings, this one is no big deal. In real money it is only $40 a day, about $10,000 a year. Not much in budgets totaling hundreds of millions of dollars.

But there are several reasons this cost-cutting example is important: In truth, most waste in government is not elephant size; it is in their aggregate that they become meaningful. This also shows what one dedicated employee can do.

Even more important, the notion of economizing in government has taken root. Already, the state attorney's office has joined the centralized mail room; the school district, which could save $10 a day, is considering it.

In recent years we have seen Year of the Woman, Year of the Environment and the Year of the Child. With this small example of trimming in government spending under our belt, may we look forward to the Year of Economy in Government?

Second time around: Do Sanford people read more than others in Seminole County? Or are the rest of us recycling fewer of our newspapers?

That was my question upon reviewing the latest figures on county recycling. Sanford, with a slightly smaller population than Altamonte Springs, recycled almost one-third more newspapers than the county's largest city - 99,720 to 69,097 - and outstripped every other city as well.

Sherry Newkirk, Seminole's recycling chief, said that was also her question when the October figures came out. Not to take anything from Frank Kilgore, Sanford's solid waste superintendent ''who's doing a fantastic job,'' but Altamonte, she says, has always done a super recycling job.

Indeed, all of Altamonte's figures were down in October, leading Newkirk to believe that recycling truck drivers might have credited the county for loads they delivered to Southeast recycling.

At any rate, recycling in Seminole continued to look good last month, with 6.1 million pounds of resources sent back for another round of use.